


Purple Lipstick

by SinisterMind



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: BoyxBoy, M/M, genderqueer!Michael, michael wears make up okay, queersos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 10:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5493881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterMind/pseuds/SinisterMind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Michael picked up the eyeliner his mother left on the side of the sink and an overwhelming desire to wear it washed over him. </p><p>or</p><p>Michael likes to wear make-up</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purple Lipstick

It didn’t occur to him until he was about fifteen that boys could wear make-up. He’d always thought it was a girl thing and he wasn’t confident enough to ask why it was only for girls. 

His perspective changed when he saw that members of bands were wearing eyeliner. He saw Billie Joe Armstrong, Pete Wentz and Benji and Joel Madden – among many others – wear it on stage and in their everyday life. It was a strange concept for him to understand but he liked it. He didn’t voice this to anyone in fear they’d find him abnormal. 

He remembers that his parents had gone out to see a band a few weeks after he discovered that boys could indeed wear make-up and he was home alone. He didn’t know how to spend the few hours he would have alone so he wandered about the house looking for something to do. 

He had slipped in his current favourite album – From Under the Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy – and had turned the volume nearly all the way up so he could hear it throughout the house. 

He walked into the bathroom to wash his hands out of habit and looked around, eyes locking in on something. Michael picked up the eyeliner his mother left on the side of the sink and an overwhelming desire to wear it washed over him.

His breath quickened as he reached out to grab it and he looked around nervously even though he knew he was alone. He had no clue how to apply it correctly, he’d only seen his mother do it from afar. 

He shakily brought the pencil to the corner of his eye, pushing back his fringe so it caught behind his ear. He pressed down and attempted to line his eyes. After he did one, he took a step back and looked at it in the mirror. 

It was awful. 

It was wobbly and parts were thicker than others and he knows that it’s okay to mess up because this was his first time. But he liked how it made his green eyes bigger, liked how it contrasted against his pale skin and liked how it felt and how he felt. He felt confident. 

He took the eyeliner to his bedroom, turned down the music a little so he could hear when his parents arrived and have time to hide the eyeliner and wash his face. 

He sat at his desk, laptop open in front of him and the YouTube tab present on screen. He hesitantly typed ‘eyeliner tutorials’ into the search bar and soon enough he was watching video after video on how to apply eyeliner properly. 

He was so caught up in applying and reapplying his eyeliner that he almost didn’t hear the sound of car doors being slammed shut and the sound of his dad’s heavy footsteps on the front porch. He ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind him and quickly turned the shower on. He scrubbed at his face with the washcloth and looked at the eyeliner stained on the cloth. 

 

“Michael?” he heard his mother call out from the other side of the door. “You in there?”

“No” Michael called back sarcastically because who else would be showering. Would a robber really break into someone’s house and stop to use the shower?

“Alright honey” he heard her laugh used to his sarcasm “Finish up and go to bed yeah? It’s late”

“Yeah, okay” he replied turning the water off and squeezing the excess water out of his hair. He quite liked the hair colour was when it was wet, it was a brownish colour. And it was touching his shoulders. He grabbed his towel and ran it over his hair, spiking it up in the process. 

 

He went to bed that night thinking about eyeliner and how he wanted to wear it again. 

He remembered when his mother found out about him wearing eyeliner. He thought he was home alone so he had taken out his mother’s eyeliner – she thought she lost it and bought a new one whilst he used the one he stole – and had started applying it. He had gotten significantly better and looked like a proper emo kid now. 

His mother had walked in and he didn’t have enough time to hide his face before she dumped a bunch of clean laundry to be put away on his bed. 

 

“I want these put away properly this time, Michael” she had told him before catching sight of her son “Are you wearing eyeliner?”

“No” Michael mumbled turning his face away in embarrassment. He was embarrassed because he was a boy wearing eyeliner and his mother caught him. 

He could hear his mum moving about his room, her breathing surprisingly calm compared to Michaels. He was pretty sure his mum could hear how fast his heart was beating but she didn’t mention it. He heard the covers of his bed rustle meaning that she had sat down on the bed and he looked down at his lap. 

“Michael, please look at me” she asked softly

“No” Michael mumbled, his lap had become the most interesting thing apparently. 

“Please, baby come on, I don’t mind that you’re wearing eyeliner” she coaxed her son. Slowly Michael’s gaze shifted from his ever so interesting lap and turned his chair to face his mother. She didn’t look mad, she didn’t look confused she just looked sad but not in the ashamed way. “Is this where my eyeliner disappeared to?”

Michael nodded, 

“I wish you told me, Mikey” she started “Come here”

He slowly walked the short distance between his desk chair and his bed and sat next to his mother. His eyes gravitated back down to his lap as his mum wrapped an arm around his shoulders. 

“It suits you” she says quietly tightening her grip on her son. Michael sniffed and he felts tears well up in his eyes. “Baby, don’t cry, don’t cry, it’s okay”

“But I’m a boy and I want to wear make-up” he managed to get out as tears fell. He felt his mum shift and bring him closer to her chest. 

“You’re smudging your eyeliner” she takes a tissue out from her bra, something Michael always found weird but apparently lots of girls store stuff in their bras, and dabbed at the eyeliner smudged under his waterline. “C’mon, do you want me to do it properly?”

 

Michael nodded.

 

~

 

When Michael was eighteen, he was the master of eyeliner. He could do it almost perfectly first try and could do perfect wings. He knew the wings weren’t what the guys he has seen in eyeliner do before but he liked it and that’s all that mattered. Plus he felt powerful as fuck with winged eyeliner. 

People knew that Michael liked to wear eyeliner and was seen more often wearing eyeliner than when he doesn’t wear any. His band mates didn’t care that Michael liked to do this and were always complimenting it. It made him feel good. 

Around this age, he had been broadening his horizons with make-up and had even purchased his own eyeshadow pack. It had dark colours like black and navy and he was excited. 

Calum had been with him in the hotel room as Michael tried to open the small container, containing his laughs at his best friend who was growing increasingly frustrated. 

 

“It’s so pretty” Michael had commented as he finally got the container open, glancing up to see Calum’s reaction. 

“They seem like your colours” Calum agreed from the bed. “Do you know how to like do it?”

“Kind of” Michael shrugged “I picked up some tips from Lou when we toured with One Direction and I watched heaps of make-up tutorials”

“It can’t be too hard, right?” Calum asked “I mean make-up is pretty easy to put on”

“Do you know how long it took me to master eyeliner?” Michael raised an eyebrow “Years of practice, you don’t just naturally get the perfect wing”

“It looks so easy, it’s literally painting your face” Calum argued. Michael rolled his eyes. 

“I don’t look this good naturally, mate” 

 

Michael did find trouble with the eyeshadow. But he eventually learned all the knicks and knacks to be able to do it without looking like someone punched him in the face. 

He was proud of his attempts and even posted a picture to Instagram with a caption saying ‘feeling pretty’ and a cute monkey covering its eyes emoji. There was an immediate flood of comments, majority with compliments, others promoting their fan accounts and of course, hate. 

He never paid attention to it. He knew he looked fucking amazing with his eye make-up on and didn’t need some lowlife to keep forcing their stupid gender roles down his throat.  
He identified as male, even when he wore make-up he felt mentally and physically 100% male. He was just slightly less masculine than other men but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a boy. He’d explained this in interviews countless times but some people are so narrow minded that it goes in one ear and straight out the other. 

Apart from identifying as male, he also identified as a gay male. He realised this around the same time he started experimenting with eyeliner but the two were completely unrelated. Wearing eyeliner didn’t make him gay, his attraction to boys made him gay. 

He came out as gay when he posted a selfie of his perfect winged eyeliner when the band was just starting to get big, between the Take Me Home tour and Where We Are tour. Someone had tweeted him saying it was gay of him to do that and he had replied with ‘good thing I am gay lol’ 

The news made headlines over various gossip websites and social medias and was even trending worldwide for a solid week. Gossip accounts ate it all up like hungry sharks and it was amusing for Michael. He couldn’t care less about what people thought of him anymore. He had grown from the fifteen year old who was almost ashamed to be thinking about wearing eyeliner but here he is now and he’s fucking rocking it. 

 

~

 

Michael’s nineteen and he’s having a crisis. Maybe it’s not exactly normal for boys to wear as much make-up as he does. He’s levelled up from the eyeliner and eyeshadow and has gravitated towards lipsticks and eyebrow pencils and blush and bronzer and everything you could ever imagine. 

He knew how to contour his face, make his face look slimmer and hide his slight double chin – which he isn’t ashamed of. He looked gorgeous and everyone let him know that. He knew he was pretty, he was a pretty boy. But he couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t normal. 

He’s had this thought in the back of his mind since he was young. He never paid attention to it, it was just there and it never left. 

But right now, the thoughts are slowly taking over his mind and it won’t fucking stop. He doesn’t want to think about it, he thought he had everything about himself figured out. 

He hears a door open and he glances up to see Ashton walking in. Ashton raised an eyebrow at him as it had been such a long time that Michael has actually been bare faced. He didn’t have any make-up on, no concealer, no foundation and definitely no eyeliner. 

 

“This is something I haven’t seen in a long time” Ashton remarked pulling out a chair and sitting on it backwards, arms draped across the back. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t know” Michael answered slowly “Having a mid-life crisis, probably”

“I get you” Ashton nods “I have them like every week, it’s not even a mid-life crisis anymore it’s a weekly life crisis”

Michael managed to laugh at his friend. 

“Does this have anything to do with you being a boy and wearing make-up?” he asked “Because I told you bro, it’s all good, we don’t care, you look fab and you rock that purple lipstick”

“I know I look good” Michael licks his lips because why the fuck are they so dry? “It’s just, like, I’ve been having these thoughts about, about my, um, about my gender”

“Your gender?” Ashton repeated furrowing his eyebrows. “Are these thoughts like recent or?”

“No, I’ve had these thoughts since I like started wearing make-up, probably even before but I always ignored it and now it’s taking over my mind and I can’t stop” Michael explained as best he could. It was rushed and he felt like he shouldn’t be saying this but he can’t stop. 

“I don’t understand exactly what you’re thinking but are you trying to tell me you’re transgender or something?” Ashton asked and he’s not being rude. He’s generally curious and wants to make sure he’s on track with what’s happening.

“No” Michael shakes his head. “I’m not transgender but I don’t think I’m a boy either. I’m like in between, a mix of both?”

“A mix of both” Ashton repeated “I’m sure there’s a word for that, yeah?”

“Most likely”

 

Ashton leaves shortly after making sure Michael was okay and left him alone with his laptop. Michael browsed Google for ages, searching for a term that defined him. He didn’t even know what he was searching for so he was typing vague sentences along the lines of ‘not a boy not a girl, what am I?’ and hoping for the best. 

He was ready to give up, ready to push that thought back to the back of his mind, ready to go pay a visit to Ashton and tell him to forget everything he said, when something caught his eye. 

It was a definition and as Michael read the definition, he felt lighter, like a weight on his shoulders was being lifted off of him as he read each word. 

 

Genderqueer: denoting or relating to a person who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both, or a combination of male and female genders.

 

And it fit. 

It described exactly what he was feeling. He didn’t feel 100% male nor did he feel 100% female. He felt like he was in between, a combination of the two sexes. He wasn’t a ‘boy’ and he wasn’t a ‘girl’. He was just Michael. 

He was Michael Clifford, the genderqueer, homosexual, make-up wearing guitarist of 5 Seconds of Summer. 

And he would rock the stage every show with his eyeliner so sharp it could slit someone’s throat, and he wore dark lipsticks that made his pale skin stand out against it and he would contour his face so people could see he meant business. 

Telling the rest of his band that he was genderqueer wasn’t that much of a big deal. None of them knew what it was but supported their band mate nonetheless. Michael had rolled his eyes at their eagerness and explained exactly what genderqueer on which lead him to the discussion of pronouns. He was comfortable with he/him pronouns but wouldn’t mind they/them either. Heck he didn’t care what people called him, he, she, them, it didn’t matter. 

Luke had asked if Michael would be offended if someone called them she/her to which Michael quickly shut down by saying that he didn’t care as part of him felt like he identified as a girl just like some of him identified as a boy. And some identified as neither. 

 

“Besides” Michael added “What’s so bad about being called a girl? Girls rock, they’re so strong and powerful, I want to be strong and powerful too”

 

~

 

Michael is twenty years old and they’re about to go on stage for their last performance of the year. He sits at the mirror in the band dressing room and pulls out his make-up bag from his backpack. His make-up bag is bursting at the seams and maybe he should get a new one but he’s grown attached to the sparkly blue bag even though most of the sparkles have fallen off. He’s also pretty sure it was actually a pencil case but he doesn’t carry school supplies with him so it’s his make-up bag. 

He looks in the slightly dirty mirror, ignoring the faces Calum is making at him in the background and bites the inside of his cheek to stop the smile from forming. 

 

“Time to put my stage face on” he says in a sing song voice which makes Ashton bark out a loud laugh from the opposite side of the room. He takes out a headband that he totally didn’t steal from Ashton and puts it on so his fringe is out of his face.

“You do this before nearly every performance and I still find it weird whenever you pull your fringe back” Luke comments “It’s like whoa you have a forehead”

“A pretty big one to” Michael replies as he searches for a wipe so he can get rid of the excess sweat and grime on his face. “My fringe makes it smaller so I won’t be joining in on the quiff trend any time soon” 

“I just pictured you with a quiff” Ashton cringes “It was a weird image”

 

Michael starts applying the foundation, getting rid on the red skin on his cheeks so he’s all pale. He likes being pale. He continues putting his make up on, Calum watching him ‘sneakily’ which he really wasn’t being sneaky at all. 

Ashton and Luke had left the dressing room to talk to some of the other artists playing that they had all become good friends with – Michael was totally calm when he met DNCE – so it was just him and Calum alone in the dressing room. 

When Michael was doing his eyeliner, he noticed that Calum was now moving towards him. Michael looked to the side and gave a smile before starting the other eye. 

 

“Your hair looks good” Calum states “Looks good purple”

“Purple is my favourite colour” Michael informs him “It’s a royal colour and it’s my favourite because I deserve to be treated like royalty” 

“You can be my Queen any day” Calum responds “If I can be your King, what’s a Queen without their King?”

Michael raises an eyebrow and turns towards his best friend. 

 

“Historically, better” Michael smiles “There can be a Queen without a King but there can’t be a King without a Queen” 

“Where’d you learn that” Calum asks “You failed Year 7, 8 and 8 history”

“Tumblr” Michael shrugs focusing his attention on his contouring. “Look how different the contoured half looks compared to the other”

“You look good, you always look good”

“I know. I just like hearing you say I look good”

“You know, ever since you started wearing make-up, you’ve become way more confident” Calum smiles “You used to be so shy and secluded”

“I feel powerful” Michael takes out his favourite purple lipstick, a slightly different shade than what his hair is. “I feel like nothing can stop me when I have a face full of make-up” 

“I feel something when I look at you, Mikey” Calum looks at his best friend. “I’ve always felt something when I look at you even back in year 7. You make my stomach feel weird and my heart race and you make me want to kiss you all the time. You look so beautiful with or without make-up and I’m so in love with you”

“You’re in love with me?” Michael asks looking up through his curled eyelashes.

“Of course I am” Calum can feel his face going red “How can I not? You’re the most stunning person I have ever seen”

“You always make me feel beautiful, Cal” Michael stands up from the chair and stands in front of his best friend. “Even when I’m down and you’d come in and let me paint your nails. You’d say how pretty they were and that the colour reminded you of me and that made me feel pretty”

“You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever laid eyes on” Calum breathes out.

 

They’re standing so close to each other, their chests bumping against one another as they both leant forward and they’re kissing. 

It’s slow and full of love. Calum grips Michael’s hips bring him closer to his own body. They’re closer than ever. Michael can feel Calum’s fingers fiddling with his belt loops and Michael’s got his hands toying with the short hairs on the back of Calum’s head. 

They reluctantly pull away from the kiss, foreheads against one another as they take deep, steady breaths to get them down from this high. 

 

“I guess the Queen can have a King after all” Michael says softly, breath slightly ragged. 

“Your lipstick is smudged” Calum smiles, Michael loves when Calum smiles because his smiles gets so wide that there are crinkles around his eyes. Michael lets his arms drop from Calum’s shoulders and turns to look in the mirror but does a double take to look back at Calum. 

“Because most of it is on your lips” Michael shoots back with a smirk. He’s still smirking when Calum looks into the mirror to see the deep purple staining parts of his lips. “Purple isn’t really your colour”

“Fuck off” Calum rolled his eyes but he’s smiling. The crinkle eyed smile that Michael loves so much. 

 

The door to the dressing room opens and Ashton pops his head in. 

 

“We’re on in 5 minutes” he announces before ducking back out. 

“Perfect” Michael sits down at the mirror and opens his make-up bag again. “Just enough time to redo my make-up”

 

He turns the end of his purple lipstick that is a slightly different shade from his hair and looks at Calum.

 

“I better be treated like royalty like the Queen I am” he tells Calum before applying the royal purple lipstick. He doesn’t miss the look of fondness Calum is giving him either.


End file.
